LUDDITE

MOVEMENT
Sem VI
Paper-614
Unit-1
Bhawana Singh (Department of History)
INTRODUCTION
 “Luddite” is now a blanket term used to describe people who dislike new technology, but its origins
date back to an early 19th-century labor movement that railed against the ways that mechanized
manufactures and their unskilled laborers undermined the skilled craftsmen of the day.
 The original Luddites were British weavers and textile workers who objected to the increased use of
mechanized looms and knitting frames.
 Most were trained artisans who had spent years learning their craft, and they feared that unskilled
machine operators were robbing them of their livelihood.
 When the economic pressures of the Napoleonic Wars made the cheap competition of early textile
factories particularly threatening to the artisans, a few desperate weavers began breaking into
factories and smashing textile machines. They called themselves “Luddites” after Ned Ludd, a young
apprentice who was rumored to have wrecked a textile apparatus in 1779.
 THE LEGEND OF ‘GENERAL LUDD’
 Nottingham’s textile workers claimed to be following the orders of a mysterious “General Ludd.”
Merchants received threatening letters addressed from “Ned Ludd’s office, Sherwood Forest.”
Newspapers reported that Ludd had been a framework knitting apprentice who had been whipped at the
behest of his master and took his revenge by demolishing his master’s machine with a hammer.
 Ned Ludd, however, was likely no more real than another legendary denizen of Sherwood Forest who
fought against injustice, Robin Hood. Mythic though he may have been, Ned Ludd became a folk hero in
parts of Nottingham and inspired verses such as:
Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood
His feats I but little admire
I will sing the Achievements of General Ludd
Now the Hero of Nottinghamshire
 From Nottingham, the Luddite revolt spread during 1812 to the wool industry of Yorkshire and the
cotton mills of Lancashire. As the labor movement expanded, it also lost its cohesion and the purity of its
economic message. “It differentiated according to region, and even within regions it differed among
people in different trades,” Binfield says.
COURSE OF THE MOVEMENT
 Uprisings against a new economic structure imposed by the Industrial Revolution gave rise to
the insult “luddite.”
 The first major instances of machine breaking took place in 1811 in Nottingham, and the
practice soon spread across the English countryside.
 Claiming to take their orders from a “General Ludd,” the “Luddites” emerged as a violent force
against changes in the textile industry. Raids on textile workshops became a nearly nightly
occurrence in Nottingham since a labor uprising by highly skilled textile artisans began in
November 1811.
 Machine-breaking Luddites attacked and burned factories, and in some cases they even
exchanged gunfire with company guards and soldiers.
 The workers hoped their raids would deter employers from installing expensive machinery, but
the British government instead moved to quash the uprisings by making machine-breaking
punishable by death.
 The unrest finally reached its peak in April 1812, when a few Luddites were gunned down
during an attack on a mill near Huddersfield.
On a late January night in 1812, a mob hell-bent on violence stormed through the door of George Ball’s
textile workshop on the outskirts of Nottingham, England. With handkerchiefs tied around their faces,
the men slammed their targets with sledgehammers and fled, leaving behind five shattered knitting
machines.
The army had deployed several thousand troops to round up these dissidents in the days that followed,
and dozens were hanged or transported to Australia. By 1813, the Luddite resistance had all but
vanished.
 It wasn’t until the 20th century that their name re-entered the popular lexicon as a synonym for
“technophobe.”
 Artisans who had spent years perfecting their craft in apprenticeships protested the use of untrained
workers who generally produced inferior products.
 Many were willing to adapt to the mechanization of the textile industry as long as they shared in the
profits. However, they watched as the productivity gains from technology enriched the capitalists, not
the workers.
 English textile workers consistently found their efforts to negotiate for pensions, minimum wages and
standard working conditions rebuffed. Unable to legally form trade unions or strike, the laborers
instead wielded sledge hammers to strike a blow against industrial capitalism in what historian Eric
Hobsbawm called “collective bargaining by riot.”
 The protest also blossomed into violence as it grew in size. In addition to smashing machines, Luddites set
mills ablaze and exchanged gunfire with guards and authorities dispatched to protect factories.
 Four Luddites were shot dead in April 1812 after breaking down the doors of the Rawfolds Mill outside
Huddersfield.
 Weeks later, the laborers exacted revenge by murdering mill owner William Horsfall, who had expressed
“his desire to ride up to the saddle girths in Luddite blood,” by shooting him as he rode his own horse.
 With the uprising turning deadly, the British government dispatched 14,000 soldiers to the heart of
England to protect factories and quell the violence.
 More British soldiers were mobilized against their fellow citizens than were in the Duke of Wellington’s
army fighting Napoleon on the Iberian Peninsula.
 After Parliament decreed machine-breaking a capital offense, two dozen Luddites were sent to the
gallows, including a 16-year-old boy who had acted as a lookout. Dozens more were banished to Australia.
 The measures worked, and the Luddite movement began to dissipate in 1813. Their name, however,
endures more than two centuries later. “Luddite” has now become a catch-all term synonymous with
“technophobe,” but Binfield says that is a mischaracterization.
 “They didn’t object to the use of a new kind of machine," he says, "but to the use of existing machines in
ways that reduced wages and produced shoddy clothing."